On the bus, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

A little after 9-11.

About this time I rode on a bus with an angry silent young man with a backpack. I got a bad vibe off either himself or myself, and imagined that backpack detonating, over and over again, until i was glad to get off that bus and leave him behind. No one’s blown up a bus in Kansas City yet, but I’ve not forgotten my reaction to him.

It says more about me, I think, than him, indeed. But Mumbai brings it back.

The violence in Mumbai claimed the lives of Alan and Naomi Scherr, two pilgrims from the Synchronicity community in Virginia. It seems tragic and ridiculous that two people, father and daughter, peacefully visiting ashrams in India, should be slain in this callous way. It seems that anyone should have died there that day, walking down the street and minding their own business, but there it is.

There is something wrong afoot in the world. Maybe there always has been.

Indian security forces are saying that the only one of these persons they have caught alive is Pakistani. Pakistan is not keen to hear this. We shall see where this goes.

Killing and killing and killing, and eye for an eye until every eye is blind.

I’m growing concerned that the events in Mumbai will lead to war if Pakistan is involved. It is impossible to say a thing is “India’s 9-11″ because India and Pakistan have been trading violence for over sixty years, with three major wars, a small war, and endless incidents and conflicts. But with matters in Pakistan as unstable as they are, and with the arrogance and violence with which this attack was applied, if Pakistani intelligence is connected to these murders (perhaps with knowledge of the government,) it is not impossible to imagine a fifth Indian-Pakistan war in the early days of 2009.

This would indeed be a supreme test of the last days of the Bush administration and the first days of the Obama administration. What would we do? Pakistan is at least a nominal enemy of the United States against al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism. India, despite a history of Third Way geopolitics rather against the US and slightly in favor of the Soviets, is a natural ally of Anglo-America and a major trading partner. Would we mediate? Or become involved? What if it went nuclear?

If Pakistani security services are involved, they must want war. If they want war, they must expect the risk of nuclear war. If they accept this risk, then they must, to a degree, want it. What is the game? What do these people want to do to the world? Is their god driving them to murder endless millions of India’s and their people? Or are they just evil? Or do they have something in mind–a tangible goal worth this much death?